“A Particular Fact.”
The Indexes, &c. to the Every-Day Book, Vol. I. were published on the 5th of May, 1826.
The new preface to the volume is particularly addressed to the notice of correspondents, and I shall be particularly obliged if every reader of the work will favour it with attentive perusal.
Chronology.
It should be observed of Joseph Baretti, who died on this day in the year 1789, that he was the friend and associate of Johnson, who introduced him to the Thrale family, and whom he assisted in the compilation of his “Dictionary of the English Language.”
Baretti was a native of Turin; he had received a good education, and inherited paternal property, which in his youth he soon gambled away, and resorted to a livelihood by teaching Italian to some English gentlemen at Venice; whence he repaired to England, and distinguished himself as a teacher of Italian. By his employment under Dr. Johnson, he acquired such a knowledge of our language as to be enabled to compile the “Italian and English Dictionary,” which is still in use. He then revisited his native country, and after an absence of six years returned through Spain and Portugal, and in 1768 published “An Account of the Manners and Customs of Italy,” in reply to some querulous strictures on that country in the “Letters from Italy” by surgeon Sharp, which Baretti’s book effectually put down, with no small portion both of humour and argument. Not long afterwards, he was accosted in the Haymarket by a woman, whom he repulsed with a degree of roughness which was resented by her male confederates, and in the scuffle, he struck one of them with a French pocket dessert knife. On this, the man pursued and collared him; when Baretti, still more alarmed, stabbed him repeatedly with the knife, of which wounds he died on the following day. He was immediately taken into custody, and tried for murder at the Old Bailey, when Johnson, Burke, Goldsmith, Garrick, Reynolds, and Beauclerk gave testimony to his good character; and although he did not escape censure for his too ready resort to a knife, he was acquitted. Domesticated in the Thrale family, he accompanied them and Dr. Johnson to Paris, but in a fit of unreasonable disgust, quitted them the next year; and in the latter part of his life was harassed with pecuniary difficulties, which were very little alleviated by his honorary post of foreign secretary to the Royal Academy, and an ill-paid pension of eighty pounds per annum under the North administration. Among other works he published one with the singular title of “Tolondron: Speeches to John Bowles about his edition of Don Quixote, together with some account of Spanish Literature.” This was his last production; his constitution was broken by uneasiness of mind and frequent attacks of the gout, and he died in May, 1789.
Baretti was rough and cynical in appearance, yet a pleasant companion; and of his powers in conversation Johnson thought very highly.
He communicated several of Dr. Johnson’s letters to the “European Magazine,” and intended to publish several more; but on his decease his papers fell into the hands of ignorant executors, who barbarously committed them to the flames.[177]